now, we believed you then were, and would remain for some
time. Otherwise I am sure my child would have waited, that you might
have been present at her marriage. And to think you should have come
back the very next day! She will be so sorry!"

"Do you think so?" said the earl, sadly, and said no more.

But, on his return to the Castle, he saw lying on his study-table a
letter, in the round, firm, rather boyish hand, familiar to him as that
of his faithful amanuensis of many years.

"It's surely frae Miss Helen--Mrs. Bruce, that is," said Malcolm,
lifting it. "But folk in love are less mindfu' than ordinar. She's
directed it to Charlotte Square, Edinburg, and then carried it up to
London wi' hersel', and some other body, the captain, I think, has
redirected it to Cairnforth Castle."

"No remarks, Malcolm," interrupted the earl, with unwonted sharpness.
"Break the seal and lay the letter so that I can read it. Then you may
go."

Bur, when his servant had gone, he closed his eyes in utter hopelessness
of dejection, for he saw how completely Helen had been deceived.

Her letter ran thus--her poor, innocent letter--dated ever so long
ago--indeed, the time when she had told her father she should write
--the night before her marriage-day:

"MY DEAR FRIEND,--I am very busy, but have striven hard to find an
hour in which to write to you, for I do not think people forget their
friends because they have gotten other people to be mindful of too. I
think a good and happy love only makes other loves feel closer and
dearer. I am sure I have been greeting (Old English: weeping) like a
bairn, twenty times a day, ever since I knew I was to be married,
whenever I called to mind you and my dear father. You will be very good
to him while I am away? But I need not ask you that. Six months, he
says--I mean Captain Bruce--will, according to the Edinburg
doctor's advice, set up his health entirely, if he travels about in a
warm climate; and, therefore, by June, your birthday, we are sure to be
back in dear old Cairnforth, to live there for the rest of our days, for
he declares he likes no other place half so well.

"I am right to go with him for these six months--am I not? But I
need not ask; you sent me word so yourself. He had nobody to take care
of him--nobody in the world but me. His sisters are gay, lively
girls, he says, and he has been so long abroad that they are almost
strangers. He tells me I might as well send